A Phase-Rendezvous Approach for Multi-phase Trajectory Optimization of Reusable Launch Vehicle

In addition to the launch phase optimization, the trajectory optimization of the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) includes the optimization of the booster landing phase. Due to the coupling relationship between the launch trajectory and the landing trajectory, it is difficult to solve a multi-phase trajectory optimization problem of RLV. To overcome the above challenge, this paper proposes a Phase-rendezvous Approach (PRA) which reconstructs the original multi-phase optimization problem to obtain the optimal solution and takes the VTVL multi-phase trajectory optimization problem as an example to carry out optimization calculations. The calculation results show that PRA successfully solves multi-phase trajectory optimization problem of RLV.